Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Oct 22, 2021

  Unfortunately it gets a little boring and repetitive, was still enjoying the game until the mission where you have to shoot down 6 bombers from the ship, if you fail you have to wait a whole min spotting even though you know what direction the bombers will be coming, for some reason I struggled getting all 6 and got fed up waiting a min like I was in some lobby online waiting for another chance, the game went from fun to annoying as quick as that. game runs ok and looks ok, ryzen 7 3800X, 68000Xt, 32GB Ram, win 10 64.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 20, 2014

  I wouldn't consider this a simulator if I was at gunpoint. The flight mechanics are... rough to say the least. The keyboard mapping is almost absent from what I can tell. Flying by mouse, there are maybe five or so keys including a second primary fire button... just in case your left click breaks. Taking off from a carrier I found myself rocketed abruptly upwards by some mystical force halfway across the deck and then when landing stopped about as abruptly as hitting a brick wall. The voice acting in the campaign felt a bit forced and was empty of depth or feeling (especially in the Japanese campaign) and didn't really contribute anything to a storyline. The missions are extremely repetetive as well (bomb a target, switch planes, bomb said target again). On the better side, the game did have some pretty cool explosions and the planes burning out of the sky were as asthetically pleasing as it gets. Bullet and cannon impacts in both soil and water are pretty well mimmicked although the auto aim defeats the whole purpose of WWII dogfighting. Ships will sink if they are destroyed, which is nice, although I found it odd that the USS Arizona was capsized by torpedos and fully submerged in shallow water in about one full minute... All in all I'd say this game is worth 3 out of 10 stars. Would not ever recommend this to anyone looking for a "flight sim" despite what any of the trailers or pictures make it out to be.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 23, 2014

  Lots of quickfire fun, but the campaign was getting repetitive. Had a nice system that allowed switching between pilots when you ran out of ammo, and the pilots automatically upgraded skills if you keep them alive.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 2, 2022

  Very good game, easy to play, beautiful graphics and lots of fun.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 14, 2014

  If you own a Hotas X Joystick. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. The flight model is completely broken for it. Wobble from left to right, with no way to fix it, the turning is unresponsive and feels heavy. HORRIBLE. I am not sure if this happens with all Joysticks, but with the Hotas X it is. I tried playing it with a gamepad, and it felt terrible too, that might just be me being used to Joystick, but I dont think so, I played all of the Ace Combat series on gamepad, and those felt a million times better when compared to how this game felt on a gamepad. Uninstalled. Secret Wars, the one before this is great, and the controls work far better on that one. If you plan on getting one of these get that, or wait for a Steam sale. You can get Secret Wars, this one and the Vietnam one for like 5 dollars.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 7, 2014

  A complete piece of shit. Arcade battle forces Z axis to the X axis and you cannot roll or yaw correctly. The game hitches graphically when in 3rd person view but no other view. The air model is so "floaty" you get sea sick playing it. I seriously wanted to like this game... and spent over 2 hours TRYING to make anything and everything work but it was useless. I even tried to contract the developer AND even the lead programmer himself and they refuse any help at all. It looks pretty in pictures... and plays so so.. but you will either have game stopping crashes, control issues where you cannot fly the plane (like a plane should fly) or just frustrating missions where the damage models are way off. I wasted $9 on this piece of pretty crap and of course cannot get a refund. Air Combat Secret Wars was fun... and I was hoping this was much better... looks MUCH better... plays MUCH worse. Buyer beware... Sad that this has SO much potential but is nothing but pretty junk software! >:(
• joseph_romo

  Oct 31, 2014

  controls are fucking horrible...waste of 20 bucks!!!!
• gamedeal user

  Dec 11, 2022

  It's a decent game but it's not good enough for the $10 price. It has some major issues that makes me lean more towards a negative review. The graphics are decent for a 10 yr old game. Controls are ok (I don't play many flight sims so take that with a grain of salt). Seems to be somewhat historically accurate. I mean you can't win WWII as Japan so it's at least that accurate. Unfortunately this is supposed to be a WWII flight sim but the AI makes it feel like you're fighting a one man war because the AI is so useless. The immersion is terrible because of this and it makes the game tedious because you have to do almost everything yourself while the AI is just there for show? The ground bombing missions are the absolute worst. I can't say what it's like to bomb a plane on the ground with a WWII plane but if it was actually this tedious IRL those WWII pilots were freaking saints with more patients than anyone I know. Several mission objective are at best very misleading and at worst straight out lies or the objectives are just confusing. I get that you can't be perfectly clear about the objective without giving the ending away but it could have been done better imo. The mission difficulties vary widely. Some missions have time limits and it displays the time limit but there is one mission towards the end that has a time limit but doesn't state it in anyway. TLDR, buy it on sale. Don't expect too much. Play it for a few hours and then forget it about it.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 26, 2018

  This game [b] deserves far more love and better rating than "mixed" [/b], and here's why I think so in a few simple points: PROS: [list] [*]pleasant flight model in arcade mode, it's a joy to dive bomb and manoeuver through AA fire to torpedo a ship [*]excellent WW2 naval/air warfare atmosphere, pretty visuals to reinforce this [*]good mission design that recreates famous battles from the Pacific War surprisingly faithfully [*]2 campaigns, one for the US and one for the Japanese, with all in all 20 chapters, some comprising more than one mission [*]game is easily moddable when it comes to sounds and textures (for example you can make your own roundels if you have a graphic software that can handle .dds files such as Gimp) [*]you control a whole squadron at a time, so when your plane get shot down or run out of ammo, you can switch to another airplane. Pretty interesting and fun system for such a game [*]a solid list of airplanes from the Pacific War on both side (US and Japanese). Planes are mostly divided between fighters, dive bombers and torpedo bombers [/list] NEUTRAL: [list] [*]no real story (in the US campaign anyway; you have a bit more in the Japanese campaign as it is told from the perspective of the daughter of the pilot) [*]you can edit pilot roster for your squadrons if you wish. Didn't find any real use for this, but those who like to min/max will enjoy this. [/list] CONS: [list] [*]some missions are generic "turret" minigame and are pretty boring and sometimes even frustrating. Thankfully these missions are not required to advance in the game and can be skipped/ignored [*]music is really uninspired and meh. Thankfully you can mod this and add your own music [*]setting up the controls can be a real pain. The menu from which you are supposed to do so is unusable so you have to rely on the joystick.ini file in the game folder. [/list]
• gamedeal user

  May 7, 2019

  This game is playable, but reaching the mission goals often enough seems impossible. I've played several similiar games and it's not often that I play easier as the normal difficulty, but in this game I gave up even on easy. Hitting enemies in the air isn't a problem, challenging and great fun. But hitting goals on the ground seems nearly impossible. Besides the enemy flak-fire destroys you 10 times faster than you can destroy the goal-objects. Not even on easiest difficulty I had any chance...